A beautiful island, many hop over to enjoy sandy beaches, stunning views and an array of water sports to keep the whole family entertained. But rather than taking the car (supposedly taking a ferry across the Solent is one of the most expensive crossings per mile in the world!), if you opt for your bike it’s considerably cheaper and offers a great opportunity to explore the island in a different way to most visitors.

Completing a wild challenge renews in me a faith in myself. It shows me what I can accomplish, if only I’m silly enough to dream up some random challenge and then boldly follow it to the end, no matter how I feel along the way.

As it turns out, when you try to cycle the length of a river, you don’t actually get to see a whole lot of the river.

At it’s source it trickles along back streets and through the edges of vast fields far away from any cycle path or road. And as it reaches an urban area you might be lucky enough for a stretch or two of towpath as the river’s historic use for transport enables far better navigation by bicycle.

While adventure is often thrilling, immensely fun and can push a new limit, it can also be a way to unwind, relax and simply enjoy some down time. And what better way to recuperate on a microadventure than having it end with a session in the Spa.

Microadventures are awesome - the 9–5 daily grind, not so much - but helpfully Al Humphreys has suggested a range of ways to get out and do something different on a micro scale and the 5–9 is a common choice.

It was August 2014 and I was enjoying the summer off. Well, I say ‘off’, I’d been made redundant 3 months prior and was using the lure of summer sun to put off figuring out what I’d do next. But I knew I wanted a complete change. This was the perfect fresh start and I felt liberated by having the decision to move on made for me. Now, the world was at my feet and I wanted to start exploring it, experiencing life outside of my current day-to-day.